Recent Opinions

It’s time to call all of these hate acts against people of color what they are: acts of terrorism. We must stop tiptoeing around this word, terrorism, which makes us uncomfortable, because the use of the word “terrorism” to describe the actions of part of the American population will make its perpetrators aware of our hypocrisy.

Growing up, I longed for people to view me as intelligent. I loved being associated with the adjective smart, and I, in turn, also complimented others’ intelligences freely. It wasn’t until later that I realized how damaging and invalidating that simple praise could be.

I held a human brain once — lifted it out of a skull in a human dissection. Cradling it carefully in both hands, I marveled that this three-pound organ once held the essence of the deceased person before me. It was a profound moment in my scientific education.

But if the significance of the adult human brain is awe-inspiring, the balletic dance of the developing brain is miraculous. It’s precisely choreographed by millennia of evolutionary optimization and directed by a series of developmental signals that somehow transform a ball of cells into a thinking, functioning human brain.

Brain development is a process we still know little about. Yet its complexity and delicacy suggest that it may be susceptible to a variety of derailments. So we instruct women who may become pregnant to chow down on folic acid supplements and warn expecting mothers to eschew alcohol. New parents are asked to stimulate their child’s neurological development with conversation, reading, and educational toys.

It’s safe to say that baby brains are important to us.

So why, then, do we let tens of thousands of chemicals go untested into the environment, when we know that at least some of them pose serious neurological threats?

And Bellinger’s work analyzed the neurological damage produced by only three (methylmercury, lead, and organophosphate pesticides) of potentially thousands of toxic compounds.

Wait. Doesn’t everyone know about lead poisoning? And surely people keep children away from pesticides, right?

The answer to the first question is yes, mostly, but only after decades of accumulating evidence finally convinced the Centers for Disease Control to lower the advisable limit of lead concentration in children’s blood.

As far as organophosphate pesticides go, many of them are fat-soluble. This means that once they enter the human body, they tend to stay there, accumulating over time. And one of their favorite places to reside is in human breast tissue, from where they ultimately make their way into fat- and protein-rich mother’s milk, fed to suckling infants at some of their most vulnerable stages of brain development.

Should mothers stop breast-feeding?

Absolutely not, say healthcare providers. The benefits — to nutrition, to the immune system and beyond — vastly outweigh the costs. Yet it’s nonetheless disturbing to think that such an intimate and pure act is now irrefutably marked by the chemical signature of modern times.

Breast milk contains traces of hundreds of different chemicals that permeate our everyday life. If we are lucky, most will prove harmless. But an unlucky few, like lead, will eventually prove to be carcinogens or neurotoxins, and we will wish, as with lead, that we’d caught on earlier.

The way America’s chemical regulations are designed, it’s unlikely we’ll ever get ahead of the game. Though the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 requires that the Environmental Protection Agency review all chemicals imported to or manufactured in the United States, only five of the 80,000 compounds regulated under the Act have been banned. And 60,000 compounds were grandfathered in under the act, never to be reviewed at all.

Attempts to reform the act languish on Congressional backburners. The latest attempt is a year old, languishing in its efforts to reconcile industry lobbying with the public good.

But ultimately, the problem with regulation in hindsight is that the burden of proof falls on regulators after the chemicals have been introduced to our environment, where they may remain in our very bodies for decades. As long as we embrace the promise of modern chemistry — and, indeed, it has provided many miracles — we will continue to subject ourselves to its darker shadow, often long after the chemical brain drain has begun.

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About Holly Moeller

Holly is a Ph.D. student in Ecology and Evolution, with interests that range from marine microbes to trees and mushrooms to the future of human life on this swiftly tilting planet. She's been writing "Seeing Green" since 2007, and still hasn't run out of environmental issues to cover, so to stay sane she goes for long runs, communes with redwood trees and does yoga (badly).

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Opinions Columnists

Nick Ahamed The Muckraker

Mark Bessen The Fault in Our Systems

Winston ShiA More Perfect Union

Mysia AndersonEvolving

Johnathan Bowes Super Tuesday

Aimee TrujilloSuper Tuesday

Veronica Anorve Super Tuesday

Neil ChaudharyDouble Take

Mina ShahWednesdays in the World

Raven JiangQuoth the Raven

That’s what we said

Until we build a culture where mental health is urgently and openly discussed — and we are well on our way — the demand for CAPS will only grow. Students, accustomed to some of the best student services in the world, expect better from what is supposed to be the University’s last line of defense. —Vol. 247 Editorial Board